


thick and thin 'til our last days

by defcontwo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes and the 21st Century, Coming Out, F/F, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Steve Rogers versus the Republican Media Machine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 12:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20705822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: Natasha leans back in her seat again and lets a slow, cat-that-got-the-canary grin cross her face. “Oh,” Natasha says, “he got laid.”“Huh,” Sam says. He looks over at Steve and then nods. “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.”Steve tips his head back against the couch and lets out a groan. “Jesus Christ, Natasha.”(5 times that Steve & Bucky were nothing like how anyone expected them to be + 1 time that someone was absolutely done with their shit).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> me: this is shamelessly self-indulgent & incredibly tropey & definitely played-out  
me @ me: the year is 2019 & society is on fire, find happiness wherever you can get it

Sharon should’ve known this was coming. Pretty much everything that she’s done in the past two years has been leading up to it, so it’s not a surprise, exactly. 

Her whole life, all she ever wanted was to take this one simple path and see it straight through to the end and do her goddamn best along the way but two years ago, that path took a pretty sharp left. It started from the very moment that she kicked the chair out from beneath Cameron’s body, saving him from taking a bullet to the head, and kept on veering ever onwards as she joined the C.I.A., and made a conscious effort to climb the ladder and keep her ear to the ground, because she just can’t believe in chain of command the way she used to, not anymore. 

Helping Steve drop off the grid was a no-brainer, after all of that. So was meeting him on a quiet road beneath an old highway with a duffle bag full of tac-gear and kissing him on the cheek, just once, because she couldn’t help herself. She remembers taking in the blush crawling its way up his neck and thinking to herself, hot damn, maybe in another life. 

In this life, though, she just grinned up at him a little crookedly and said, “sorry, Cap, I don’t think I can kiss someone who would pull a helicopter out of the air for me, that’s too much fucking pressure for this gal,” and he’d blushed even harder and she’d thought, yeah, this one is a good friend to have. 

And she still thinks that. Steve is a good friend to have. 

But then Betty Ross went looking for a thumb drive full of very damning evidence in her father’s home office and upon finding it, decided to pull a Natasha Romanoff and leak the whole damn thing on the Internet. 

Now, everyone knows about the secret underwater prison and how General Ross didn’t give a single fuck about collaborating with HYDRA as long as it got him what he wanted and what he wanted was the Winter Soldier, under his control, along with all of the very messy details on how HYDRA used to go about doing that. 

Now, there’s a whole lot of embarrassed Beltway dumbasses scrambling to deal with the pretty extreme 360 that public opinion has done on the Accords, especially now that they can all see for themselves just exactly what was done to Sergeant James Barnes, formerly of the Howling Commandos, and also formerly the star of most American kids’ first ever book report. 

Sharon’s been in a lot of fucking meetings since Betty Ross’s data dump. This one might be the most important of them yet but that doesn’t make it any less infuriating. 

So, Steve better appreciate it, is all she’s saying. Three fucking hours in the situation room with the President and the Joint Chiefs and the N.S.A. and fucking _Tony Stark_, for some reason, as if he’d ever give up the kind of information required to get this level of Security Clearance, and the only real joy that Sharon is getting out of this is a) the fact that she has a pretty fun Wakandan-made piece of tech burning a metaphorical hole in her suit jacket pocket and b) that Bobbi Morse, formerly of SHIELD and currently an N.S.A. agent, was sent for today’s meeting. She’s a woman that Sharon had previously only known by reputation and while don’t get Sharon wrong, it’s a very, very good reputation, somehow the stories left out what an absolute _smokeshow_ Morse is, what with that wicked light-eyed stare and the adorable mole on her cheek. 

President Gilchrist, newly inaugurated and already looking like he’s regretting this whole president business in the first place, has new lines written into his handsome face, his grey-brown hair shot through with some additional streaks of silver. 

Well. He did inherit a hell of a shitshow from the last guy. 

Gilchrist sags slightly in his seat, rubbing one hand tiredly over his eyes. “Look, the Accords weren’t a good idea, I think we can all agree on that at this point.” 

“Uh, I mean, no, I don’t think we _can_...” Stark interrupts, sitting up sharply. He gets a nod from a general or two but considering they were all pretty buddy-buddy with General Ross two weeks ago, it doesn’t exactly hold a lot of weight. 

Sharon closes her eyes and prays silently for death. There’s a lot that she could say here but she also knows that there are people in this room who think the only reason she’s here is because her last name is Carter. She doesn’t want to blow her political capital in the room _just_ yet. 

Luckily, Bobbi Morse goes and does it for her. “As I understand it, the entire reason Captain America didn’t want to sign the Accords was his fear that the _very incident that we are discussing right now_ would wind up happening.” Morse flips the open folder in front of her idly shut with one neatly manicured finger and levels Stark with a cool glare. She’s right, of course, but there’s no way what she’s saying is a NSA-sanctioned position. 

Sharon flashes back to the brief but intense flirtation that she struck up with Natasha Romanoff while she was in Wakanda to debrief Steve’s gang of renegade Avengers. Probably, she should be a little more embarrassed than she is at how completely she has a type. 

“Most of us are career public servants and the whole thing with public service is, you’re _supposed_ to be nonpartisan but it doesn’t always work out that way,” Morse continues, pausing, like she wants what she’s about to say next to really sink in. “We can’t afford to be naive enough to pretend otherwise. Alexander Pierce used to be one of us, remember.” 

“Exactly,” Gilchrist says, pointing his finger in Morse’s direction. “Exactly what Agent Morse just said. And who’s idea was it to give the United Nations oversight? They’re a peacekeeping organization, for Christ’s sake! What do they know about responding to alien threats to our national security?” Gilchrist throws both hands up in the air, the corner of his mouth twisted in disgust. “They couldn’t even handle _Bosnia_.” 

Stark grits his teeth. “Fine, whatever. Agree to disagree. I’m fine with pardoning Cap and his merry gang of rebels, send the white flag over to Endor, whatever. But what are we gonna do about Barnes?” 

Here, another general pipes up. “I mean ...there's no doubt that he’s dangerous but he’s also an American POW. We’ve all seen the files, right? They found him in ‘45 and they weren’t able to get anywhere close to breaking him until ‘58. That’s….we don’t have the precedent, for brainwashing, it’s never happened before…..I say we pardon him but with conditions, you know?” 

“Keep an eye on him,” Morse suggests, steepling her fingers on the edge of the conference room table. “Give him freedom with a short leash for six months, maybe a year, until he’s proven that he’s safe, that he’s exactly who Captain Rogers says he is.” 

“Cap will never agree to that,” Stark says, and it’s the first time all day that Sharon’s agreed with _him_. “It’ll be freedom or nothing, he’s not gonna put his best pal in some kind of fancy cage. That is what you’re thinking, right? Stick him on a base for a year?” 

“Nah, I was thinking we’d just stick him in your ugly tower in Midtown,” Morse says, with no small amount of sarcasm. 

“Now _that_,” Stark says, “is an idea that I could actually trust, instead of leaving it up to - I’m sorry, who is it that does your tech around here?” 

The president’s chief of staff, a small dark-haired woman who hasn’t spoken much over the past few hours but who has definitely listened a hell of a whole lot, waves her red ballpoint pen in the air to get the room’s attention. “Hold up. Before we go too far down that rabbit hole, do we know what Sergeant Barnes has been up to since Germany? Do we even know where he is?” 

Sharon presses her lips together and tries not to smile. Across the table, Morse shoots her a curious look, raising a single dark eyebrow in question. 

Stark clicks the side of his phone on the table and that’s a risky move, letting loose a nervous habit in a room full of intelligence agents. He shakes his head. “Last time I spoke to Rogers was two weeks ago, for all of five minutes on a piece of shit burner phone, and he didn’t say a word. For all we know, Barnes is back with HYDRA and killing to his heart’s content, and Rogers is just too chicken-shit to admit it.” 

Sharon frowns, hard, because that kind of talk makes her want to sock Stark clean across the jaw, but upon second glance, he doesn’t actually look like he believes a single word that just came out of his mouth. More like, maybe he wishes he could. 

Well. She guesses those HYDRA files on Bucky must’ve gotten under his skin more than she expected. That’s good news. 

Sharon slips one hand into her jacket pocket, withdrawing the kimoyo beads and placing them in front of her. “Captain Rogers didn’t say anything because he didn’t know how this was going to shake out and because he didn’t have permission from the leader of the sovereign nation where they’ve taken refuge yet.” 

Gilchrist leans forward, eyes wide and tired and a little bit desperate, almost like he wishes he could grab hold Sharon’s words like a lifeline to get him out of this mess. “And you have that information?” 

Sharon nods. “King T’Challa gave me the go-ahead this morning.” She activates the kimoyo beads and a hologram takes shape in front of them, showing a brief collection of photos of Steve and Bucky with Sam and Natasha and various members of the Dora Milaj in the Wakandan countryside. 

The room erupts into chaos, with everyone trying to talk over each other at once, but Sharon just shifts in her seat and knocks on the heavy wooden table until the furor quiets down. 

“King T’Challa took Sergeant Barnes in immediately after the….incident in Siberia.” Sharon clears her throat and carefully doesn’t look Stark’s way as she continues. “The Wakandan science department is led by ...a pretty remarkable prodigy and she worked hard to dismantle the trigger words and other programming that HYDRA stuffed inside Sergeant Barnes’ head. He’s been recovering there ever since.”

“So he’s… been granted asylum by the very man who wanted the Accords and his head on a platter in the first place?” Another one of the generals speaks up, from the far corner of the room. Sharon’s pretty sure that his name is Matthews, or maybe it’s Hamilton. They all have the same square jaw, it’s impossible to tell them apart anyways. 

Stark just folds his arms over his chest. “So, why can’t he just stay there, then?” 

“Because Steve won’t come back without him.” Sharon swipes at the hologram idly, bringing up a collation of Gallup polls taken over the past few years on whether or not people still think there’s a place for Captain America in the 21st century. 

The results were holding pretty steady at 51%, even throughout the whole mess in Germany, but the last one, taken a week ago, shows that while faith in the government’s ability to sniff out homegrown threats was at an all-time low right now, Captain America’s approval rating just skyrocketed up to 65%. 

Gilchrist’s eyebrows climb up into his forehead. Sharon smirks, just a little, because she knows that she’s got him, but it doesn’t hurt to hammer the point home. “See, before, people liked the idea of Captain America but they couldn’t relate to him all the way, they thought he was too old fashioned. Now that he’s an international fugitive and a popular anti-fascism meme, Cap’s looking like the kind of moral compass that we need right now — the kind that isn’t afraid to question authority. So my question for all of you is this: do you really want to deal with this shit without him?” 

Gilchrist turns to Stark. “If you take Barnes in at your Tower, can we trust you not to kill him?” 

Stark folds his arms across his chest even tighter, if it’s possible. “If I wanted to kill him, would I admit it to all of you right here in the bowels of the fucking White House?” Stark collapses his arms and blows out a breath. “I’m not gonna kill the guy, Jesus, it’d be like putting down a sad murder robot puppy. But that doesn’t mean I have to like the guy or trust him.” 

“So that’s a yes, then?” Morse prompts. 

Stark waves a hand in front of himself in a dramatic “go right ahead” gesture that Sharon figures is as close to a yes as they’re gonna get. Because at the end of the day, their competing interests align exactly right — this is the best deal they’re gonna get for Bucky’s freedom and Stark doesn’t trust anyone but himself to keep an eye on the Winter Soldier. 

Christ. This is gonna get messy. 

General Hamilton-Matthews-Square Jaw clears his throat. “Agent Carter. You’re, ah, friendly with Captain Rogers, then?” 

Across the table, Morse’s eyes widen and she whistles lowly under her breath. Yeah, Sharon didn’t think she was imagining the nasty undertone there. 

Sharon meets the General’s gaze head on. “I’m not fucking him, if that’s what you’re asking.” 

The General sputters. “I didn’t mean — “ 

“You did mean,” Sharon interrupts, smoothly. “And everyone here knows it. Just so we’re clear — I’m not fucking Captain America, we’ve become pretty good friends, actually, but if I was? It still wouldn’t be any of your goddamn business.” 

“So, uh,” Gilchrist says, shooting a conciliatory look in Sharon’s direction, “maybe you should be the one to take the lead on this, then? You can be the government liaison and we’ll arrange for uh, god, what’s even the right thing to do in this situation -- a psychiatrist? To assess Barnes and the state of things once a month.” 

The rest of the Joint Chiefs nod along, noncommittally, which Sharon figures is probably more down to the fact that they don’t want this to be their problem when it goes belly up, but Morse looks tentatively approving, which actually means something. 

“Get me a short-list of 10 psychiatrists by the end of the week and I’ll get them to Romanoff to vet them,” Sharon agrees. “She’ll narrow it down to a couple that are approved and this committee can have final say on who gets chosen.” 

The chief of staff drains her coffee cup, setting it down on the table with a small thunk, before turning to Sharon. “Why Romanoff?” 

_Because I trust her_ is the right answer but it’s not the one that this room wants to hear. Sharon shrugs a shoulder. “Because after the Triskelion, she’s the only one paranoid enough to do the job. We don’t want anymore surprise Nazis, do we?” 

“No. That’s….we don’t want that.” Gilchrist blanches, looking very much like he wishes he was anywhere but here, dealing with any of this. 

He ran on health care reform, Sharon recalls, idly, health care reform and decreasing the military budget. This is a tough crowd, for him. 

Not her problem right this second, though. Sharon reaches her hand across the table towards the kimoyo beads, moving to deactivate them. “Any more questions?” 

“Uh, yeah, I have a question,” Stark says. “What the fuck is going on in _that_ picture?” 

Sharon looks up, maximizing the photo that he’s pointing to, and then sits back, barely able to smother a grin. Honestly, she was waiting for this question. She wonders what anyone would do if she sneakily snapped a picture of the look on Stark’s face right now because it is, in a word, priceless. “Oh, those are goats. Bucky is staying on a farm, with some goats,” Sharon says, with an air of put-upon casualness. “He takes care of them, they’re assisting in his recovery. If memory serves correctly, they’re predominantly named after classic film stars.” 

Sharon gestures towards a ginger-colored goat. “That one’s Rita Hayworth,” she says, and Morse tries gamely to cover up a snort with her hand and absolutely fails. 

“Goats,” Stark repeats, blankly. “What the fuck.” 

Sharon taps the kimoyo beads once and the photos disappear. “So, are we done here?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part two: pepper & her PR team

Pepper doesn’t have it in her to hate Barnes.

Sometimes, she thinks that she should, if only for Tony’s sake. After all, she watched that hatred burn through him like a fever and then watched it fade from Tony just as quickly, leaving behind a sort of hollowness and the cold reality that his parents were murdered, but there’s no one left to blame.

Pepper likes to have all of the facts laid out before her. She approaches life the way she approaches a majority shareholder meeting for Stark Industries: for everything, there must be a thoroughly researched, well-documented report with tabulations and color codes.

So, she reads the Winter Soldier files, or as much as she can stomach, and every once in a while, when she’s in the middle of a muted conference call that doesn’t require a lot of her attention, she pulls up the security footage for Stark Tower and checks in on the common area space on Cap’s floor. It’s not exactly ethical, strictly speaking, but Stark Tower is her home.

She watches Barnes stir milk and honey into his morning cup of coffee; watches him curl up like a cat in a patch of sunlight on the floor to read a book; watches him try to make the same stew over and over again until it looks like he’s happy with it, as if he’s finally figured out what the key ingredient is supposed to be.

Barnes and Cap are curiously close, in the ways in which they move around each other in the kitchen, hip-checking each other on purpose or sharing a mug of coffee in the morning, or taking up each other’s space on the living room couch, where Cap often sits perched with a sketchbook in his lap, his feet tucked underneath Barnes’s legs. She wonders if it’s a closeness that they learned in the trenches or if it’s borne of something else, of what happens when you wake up in the 21st century and find that you’ve lost just about everything you ever had.

Pepper can’t help herself. She looks at Barnes and she sees herself. She sees a young man who didn’t ask to get experimented on, who never wanted to live his life with violence, and who now moves through the world with a deliberate gentleness, as if to compensate for any violence that came before. In the Winter Soldier files, her worst fears are written out in the shape of every brutal assassination, every covered up murder.

This is what Extremis was supposed to be, no matter what bullshit Killian tried to sell.

So no, she can’t bring herself to hate Barnes.

Cap, though. Cap is a little easier to pin her ire onto, for all that he used to be her favorite, after Bruce. It was Cap’s lie of omission that cut the deepest, that she knows Tony’s still struggling to move past, and for her part, Pepper treats Cap with politely sharp edges and cool glares.

For Cap’s part, he meets this informal punishment with unfailing politeness. He doesn’t turn guilty eyes her way or try to ask for forgiveness. It pisses her off, a little, but it also makes her respect him.

Which of course just pisses her off all over again. Go figure.

So maybe Pepper’s feeling just a little bit spiteful when she calls the newly formed Avengers PR team and okays a whole slew of post-Accords post-Ross-scandal TV interviews for Cap, including an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show.

Honestly, she’s not sure how that one will go. If she had to guess from how the Accords went down, she’d assume that Cap has vaguely libertarian leanings but it’s not like it’s something that ever came up in conversation. At least not with her or with Tony. But Tucker Carlson is just so damn unpleasant that she can only guess that it’ll get a little messy.

Later, Pepper will look back on that thought and wish she could kick herself in the shins with her own Manolos.

.

The show starts at 8 PM and Cap’s segments starts about halfway through, at 8:30, which is just about the time when Pepper kicks off her heels, puts her feet up on her desk, and orders dinner through her assistant.

They start off talking about the Accords, briefly — Carlson was for them and he’s got some choice things to say about Betsy Ross and how General Ross was framed, all of which Cap manages by gritting his teeth and sticking to the facts, and if you didn’t know the man, you might mistake his tone for civil.

But Pepper does know the man and she’s only heard this tone directed towards Nick Fury, on occasion, and towards several five-star generals, with great frequency. She has to admit, turning up the volume on the TV in her office, that she’s impressed by his restraint.

It goes off the rails pretty quickly, though, when Carlson starts going off on immigration and dismantling DACA, and Cap just sits back in his chair, smoothing down the front of his tie with one hand. He cuts an impressive figure these days, with the full beard and the well-tailored suits that Romanoff has picked out for him for all public appearances. Today’s number is charcoal grey, paired with a monochromed deep navy shirt and tie. When he fixes Carlson with a glare, Pepper’s pretty sure that this is the sort of thing that must’ve scared the hell out of the Nazis.

“Son,” Cap says, as if Tucker Carlson isn’t older than him, “let me tell you a story.”

Carlson looks so startled that Cap interrupted him when usually he’s the one doing the interrupting that he immediately falls silent.

“My Ma was still living in Derry when she met my father. He’d been sent to live in America when he was barely ten but he’d come back to see his aunt, his only living relative, at the end of her life. Ma, she was ...16 and a nurse’s assistant, my father was 18, and they fell in love right away. By the time they both left for New York together, they were married and by the time they reached shore on the other side, well…” Here, Cap trails off, giving the direction of the camera a wry smile. “She was already pregnant with me. I guess by your definition, that makes me an anchor baby, right?”

Carlson sputters. “Well, that’s different…”

“Why?” Cap presses, “because my skin is the same color as yours?”

“Oh Christ,” Carlson says, letting out a loud gusty sound that makes Pepper wish she could slap him through the screen. “Don’t tell me you’re one of _those_, you’re Captain America.”

Cap just barely stops himself from rolling his eyes. “Captain America was a propaganda tool, a fiction that got way out of hand after I went into the ice. Whatever you want Captain America to be, that doesn’t have a lick to do with who I am. Unlike you, I understand that there are systems in this country that privilege some and forsake others.”

“You don’t understand - “ Carlson breaks in, and there goes the interrupting.

“Son,” Cap cuts in, and there’s no mistaking the anger, now, not with the way his cheeks are flushed and his gaze has turned to steel, looking for all the world as if he wishes he could pin Carlson to the wall with his eyes. “I was born to a recently widowed immigrant at a time when to be a single mother and Irish to boot was reason enough to refuse employment. I grew up disabled and queer in the 1930s. I understand just fine. You’re the one who can’t see past the fuckin’ silver spoon in your mouth.”

And that’s about when all hell breaks loose.

.

Eight hours later, Pepper is firmly ensconced in a twenty-person conference room, the one that she’s privately referred to as her ‘war room,’ with the entire PR team, an entirely unrepentant Captain America, and a government agent who looks like she’s half awake, as if she rolled out of bed to get here.

Pepper’s learned enough from Rhodey to know that anyone who went into the business of military intelligence is not going to be someone who cares overly much about smoothing ruffled feathers when it comes to public sentiment, but Sharon Carter _is_ the official government liaison for the rehabilitation of Sergeant James Barnes. Also, there’s the fact that Camilla, Pepper’s Head of PR, looked dangerously close to quitting on the spot an hour ago so right now, Pepper’s prepared to give the woman just about anything she asks for.

Sharon yawns into the back of her hand, her blonde hair piled on top of her head in a bun, just as Cap smoothly places one of the two paper coffee cups that he’s holding into her other hand. “I heard a rumor that you might need this,” Cap says, and they’re not whispering but they’re not exactly broadcasting the conversation to the rest of the room, either.

“A rumor, huh?” Sharon asks, with the makings of a smirk curling at the edges of her smile. “Yeah, I didn’t exactly get much sleep down in Chinatown.”

Cap scoffs. “Oh, is that where that place is?”

Sharon takes a sip of her coffee, smiling serenely. “Maybe.”

“Spies,” Cap says, sighing heavily into his next sip of coffee, even as Sharon elbows him lightly in the stomach.

There’s something else that Pepper is missing, she’s sure -- some subtext to this conversation that she’s not privy to and she doesn’t like that, not when she’s in _her_ war room, so entirely on her own turf, but the body language between Cap and Sharon seems pretty platonic so for now, she’s gonna file this mystery away as irrelevant.

“How about you, Cap,” Pepper says, breaking in neatly. “How did _you_ sleep last night?”

“Like a baby,” Cap says, giving her a grin that can only be described as shit-eating, even though she’s always hated that phrase, has never before found it to be remotely accurate.

“Well, I didn’t,” Camilla says, slipping into the empty seat next to Pepper. Camilla is a no-nonsense New Yorker, a legend in the PR world who Pepper spent years trying to woo away from her old job at Condé Nast; she finally succeeded when Pepper took over the company. When Pepper asked her why that was, Camilla said that she was done cleaning up after white men and their messes, so Pepper better prove to her that Stark Industries would be different, that it’s worth her time.

Pepper adores Camilla and very much doesn’t want her to quit.

Camilla shakes her head, so her box braids flip behind her and out of her way, and pulls up the note-taking app on her iPad. “I spent three hours straight down a Twitter rabbit hole, trying to understand Gen Z memes. Captain Rogers, do you know what a Gen Z meme is?”

Cap clears his throat and straightens his shoulders. “Uh, kinda.”

Sharon glances at him askance, both eyebrows raised.

“Shuri,” he says out of the corner of his mouth, as if that’s some kind of explanation, which according to Sharon’s immediate nod of comprehension, it is.

Camilla makes a soft humming sound, lacing her fingers together in front of her iPad as she gives Cap a searching look. “Captain Rogers, just so we’re clear. Did you mean to come out as a member of the LGBT community on national television?”

“Well, I didn’t plan on it ahead of time,” Cap says. “It’s true though, if that’s what you’re asking.”

There’s a hard, stubborn tone to his voice that Pepper’s not sure she’s ever heard before. It’s not the Captain America voice, with the flat accent and the plummy vowels. Cap raises his chin, like he’s readying it for a punch, and for the first time, Pepper sees what that kid must’ve been like, the scrawny Steve Rogers who was always getting into fights he couldn’t finish.

Camilla just nods brusquely, unfolding her hands to type up some notes on her iPad keyboard. “And is queer your preferred identifier?”

At this, Cap looks caught out. He swallows thickly and nods. “I mean, bisexual also works…”

“Would you say that you use those interchangeably?” Camilla looks up, fingers pausing mid-typing. “Some people do, some people don’t. My daughter does, so I’d get in trouble later if I didn’t ask.”

Cap wipes one hand across his mouth, before letting out a low, shaky laugh. Suddenly, Pepper feels like maybe she shouldn’t be here, for all that this is her meeting.

“I, uh...I dunno, really,” Cap admits. “Can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.”

“We’ll stick with queer, then,” Camilla says smoothly, and this is why she’s the best in the business, Pepper knows, because not everyone can put people at ease like this when talking about going public with something so deeply personal. “Does anyone else have any questions for Captain Rogers or is my whole team still asleep?”

A young man in his twenties, with square glasses and a slim mauve-colored suit, raises his hand. Pepper rifles through her mental directory until she lands on a name: Yuki.

Yuki clears his throat. “Yeah, uh. Are you single?”

There are titters throughout the room, causing the tips of Cap’s ears to turn red almost instantly, all while a slow blush climbs its way up his neck.

Cap ducks his head, but the small, pleased smile that crosses his face is still very much visible. “I’m not single, no. I’m, uh, very much spoken for.” Cap rubs at the back of his neck with one hand, lifting his gaze and shooting a rueful look in Yuki’s direction. “Sorry.”

Yuki almost chokes on the sip of coffee he was about to swallow. “No, that’s. Uh. Good to know.”

“Speaking of,” Sharon starts, and god, she’s been so quiet this whole time, Pepper almost forgot she was still here. “What does your other half think about all of this?”

That startles a loud bark of a laugh out of Cap that catches more than one person in the room off guard. “He’s...exasperated but completely unsurprised.”

Sharon snorts into her coffee. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

Pepper frowns softly, casting her mental net out to include Cap’s nearest and dearest. Sam Wilson, maybe? No, he’d mentioned going on a blind date just a couple of weeks ago, during one of their regularly scheduled Avengers check-ins. Then it hits her, the only other man in Cap’s life that it could be: Sergeant Barnes.

How ridiculous, that she could watch them so closely and still somehow be blind to what was right in front of her eyes. But while there was a clear intimacy on display between the two of them, there was nothing to give this away, at least not outright -- no early morning makeouts or idle, easy kisses exchanged on their way out the door.

Then again, Pepper realizes like a stone in her gut, there wouldn’t be. Stark Tower may be her home but for them, it’s a very temporary, very comfortable holding cell. They must know that they’re being watched, even if they don’t know by who. Tony is almost certainly keeping an eye on them, for all that she’s never asked. God only knows how many others.

And just like that, what’s left of Pepper’s ire bleeds out of her.

“Alright, Steve,” she says, deliberately ignoring the way his eyes widen at her rare use of his first name, “how do you want to handle this?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her dead war hero great uncle coming back to life as a brainwashed assassin and winding up at the same glass blowing class in Fort Greene as her? 
> 
> That’s just crossing the line too far into surrealism. 
> 
> Or: the weirdest day in Rikki Barnes' life, probably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the comics, rikki is like, bucky's grandkid from another universe & while i love the multiverse & firmly believe in it, she's his grand-niece here bc this is my party & i'll multiverse only when i want to.

Rikki’s pretty used to the baseline weird of her life. She grew up in New York, which is a whole barrel of weird all on its own. She’s the grand-niece of a dead war hero that gets talked about in everyone’s history books and you’d think that people wouldn’t ask about that kind of thing all that much but growing up in Brooklyn? Woo boy. 

If she had a dollar for every time she’s had to say, “yes, I’m Rikki Barnes, yes I’m related to _that_ Barnes, and yes, my Jewish father married a Mexican-American journalist, so now there’s a Barnes running around that’s not white...” 

Well. Rikki would be a lot richer than she is, that’s for fucking sure. 

When her Uncle Luis on her mother’s side got out of prison and wound up friends with some kind of entomologist superhero, she rolled with it. Was it a little unexpected? Sure, but also, Uncle Luis could make friends with any stranger on the street so at the end of the day, it’s not as unexpected as aliens in Midtown. 

But her dead war hero great uncle coming back to life as a brainwashed assassin and winding up at the same glass blowing class in Fort Greene as her? 

That’s just crossing the line too far into surrealism. Rikki feels like she should text her roommate and ask if they accidentally put LSD in her morning coffee. She doesn’t know why they would; she’s 100% sure that they’ve never gone near LSD in their twenty-six years on this planet. She’s pretty sure she doesn’t have any other fucking viable explanation. 

“Huh,” the instructor of the class says, reading through the class list, all while Rikki hunches her shoulders down, trying to somehow look inconspicuous in her bright red leather jacket. “We have a Rikki Barnes and a...James Barnes,” the instructor says, his voice going up at the end, like he’s just now realized who the dude with the manbun and the giant fuck-off metal arm is in the corner. 

James Barnes, or Bucky, like Grandma Becca used to call him, stands rooted to the spot across the small studio, staring at Rikki in shock. They don’t look at all alike, except for how they have the same cleft chin, and how she’s pretty sure they have the same stupid look on their faces. 

Rikki waves, feeling impossibly awkward. “Hi. Rikki. Becca Barnes was my grandma.” 

Great Uncle Metal Arm at least has the graciousness to look as totally sideswiped as she does. He crosses the room to stand in front of her in quick, large strides. “You have her nose,” he says, stupidly. This is the dumbest thing that’s ever happened to Rikki, ever. “Which one’s your dad, the lawyer in Ohio or the magazine editor in Manhattan?” 

“My parents retired to Tarrytown, actually,” Rikki says. “But uh. The second one.” 

“Jacob,” he says, nodding. “Right.” 

“Yes,” Rikki says, helpfully. “That is his name.” 

“So as fucking freaky as this is,” the instructor cuts in, raising his voice over the whispers of the rest of the class. Tim, that was his name. Or was it Tom? Whatever, he’s a white guy around forty in skinny chinos, a plaid shirt, and some Warby Parkers, he could be anyone in Fort Greene. “We have a class to get to and there are people who paid a lot of money for it, so let’s get started.” 

“Wait, how much are these classes?” Her recently deceased great-uncle whispers to her out of the corner of his mouth and man, she has got to figure out what to call him. Uncle Bucky? Uncle Bucky probably works. 

“I don’t know, I won them in a raffle at a fundraiser,” Rikki whispers back. “What, you didn’t pay for your own classes?” 

Uncle Bucky shrugs. “My, uh...my therapist recommended taking up a creative outlet to you know, help with my recovery. In Wakanda, I took care of goats but there’s not a lot of those around here,” he says, with a wry twist to his lips. 

“Huh,” Rikki says. “Yeah, like...creating things with your hands instead of, um — “ 

“Killing with them?” Uncle Bucky finishes for her, and Rikki promptly blanches. He waves his flesh hand at her. “It’s fine, I. I’m getting used to joking about it, makes it all seem more, whatever. Manageable. Anyways, I told Steve that I might look into a glass blowing class and the next thing I knew, I was signed up.” 

“Hmm,” Rikki murmurs. She leans forward towards the woman standing right in front of her. “Hey, how much were these classes?” 

The woman just turns and gives Rikki a deeply unimpressed look. Tim is definitely starting the class and Rikki definitely isn’t paying attention. 

“Fuck it, now I’m curious,” Rikki mutters, digging her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans. Swift fingers fly across the smooth glass of her touch screen and she has her answer in seconds. “Dude. 800 bucks. This whole series of classes costs 800 bucks.” 

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Uncle Bucky says, flatly. “For shit’s sake, Steven. What the fuck.” 

Rikki can’t help it. She all but giggles, and she’s never considered herself the kind of person who _giggles_. “My abuelita would make you put a dollar in the swear jar if she heard you talking like that.” 

“Yeah?” Uncle Bucky asks. “What would Becca have done?” 

Rikki shoots him a conspiratorial grin. “Told you to shut the fuck up.” 

“That’s my Becca,” Uncle Bucky says, with unmistakable fondness, although she doesn't miss the way his eyes go a little tight around the edges, a little sad, just the way Grandma Becca's used to when she was thinking about him. “You think maybe we oughtta start paying attention to this schmuck?” 

Rikki shrugs, but they both go quiet, and Tim shakes his head at them from the front of the room. 

It’s unfortunate for Tim that this is the very moment that he chooses to start introducing the class on how to use the glory hole for heating their projects because the second the words “glory hole” come out of his mouth, Rikki and Uncle Bucky are snickering quietly in unison. 

“And people keep telling me Brooklyn’s not like that anymore,” Uncle Bucky whispers. 

And because for a second, Rikki’s forgotten where she is and who she’s talking to, the next words out of her mouth are, “what, you’ve been to many glory holes in your day?” 

Uncle Bucky tosses her a deeply affronted look and Rikki is full of regret for the entire second until he opens his mouth and comes out with, “Course not, I’m a romantic. I solicited fellas in bars down on Sands Street, where we could share a smoke and a drink and I could at least see their faces.” 

“Wow,” Rikki deadpans. “You’re one classy dame.” 

“The classiest,” Uncle Bucky agrees mildly. 

.

They mostly pay attention for the rest of the first class session and manage to make lopsided vases by the end of it. They exchange phone numbers and awkward waves before parting ways at the subway, him for the Manhattan bound platform and her moving deeper into Brooklyn. 

She sticks her earbuds in and lets the A train’s not-so-gentle rocking carry her back to her third floor walk up in Bed-Stuy. She thinks about Grandma Becca and the closed off, withdrawn look in her eyes she would get sometimes, a look that Rikki knew meant she was thinking about someone who she’d lost. 

Rikki asked her once, not long after Grandpa Pete passed away, if that’s who she was missing, and Grandma Becca just patted her on the hand, the way grandmothers do, and said, “Oh honey. Pete and I had a good long life together. I miss him like hell every day but...sometimes, on days like this. I look at all of you and I wish my big brother could’ve met you and thinking it over, it makes me a little sad, is all.” 

Rikki had hugged her Grandma Becca and then gone to bed in the guest room at Grandma Becca’s house that was always Rikki’s, where there was a framed photograph of Bucky Barnes in his army uniform, hat perched jauntily on his head. Rikki sat cross-legged for hours and held it up to the light, trying to guess at what he was like. If they would’ve gotten along. If he would’ve liked her. 

Now she has the chance to find out. 

Sure, it’s weird. The man is both thirty-four and ninety-nine years old at the same time. He’s lived through shit that’s the literal stuff of nightmares and he was born at a time when she wouldn’t have had the right to vote. He’s gotta have PTSD like she wouldn’t believe and if her very good hunch based on some pretty illuminating evidence turns out to be right, his boyfriend is literally Captain America.

They probably don’t use the term boyfriend. That would just...not work. They’re way too old for that. 

Besides, she likes him. He’s funny and pretty chill, all things considered. 

She’s spent the past year or so feeling pretty uncomfortable about the whole situation, torn between a desire to know more and a desire to stick her head in the sand. It was just too horrifying to think about how close in degrees of separation she was from someone who had suffered so much but also killed so many people in the process. 

Not that she blames him. She’s gotten into a shit-load of Twitter fights about just how much she doesn’t blame him. 

But that doesn’t mean that he was gonna turn out to be a guy that she actually wants to get to know. How, after all of this, could he be anything like the man that put that soft, sad look on Grandma Becca’s face? 

She replays the past two hours over and over again in her head and all she can think is, “yeah, okay, Grandma Becca. I get it.” 

Rikki shakes herself out of her stupor when she recognizes the familiar sight of the Utica Av platform, launching herself out of her seat and through the closing doors before it’s too late. 

Her mind’s made up. She’s totally gonna befriend her weird not-dead great uncle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so! sands street really was where all of the queer bars were back in the 20s and 30s. they were constantly raided, of course, but very popular due to their proximity to the brooklyn navy yard, where all the sailors were. so like yes, the docks thing is real. go figure. highly recommend “when brooklyn was queer” by hugh ryan to learn more about the borough’s queer history, it’s rad as hell.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now ft. the one and only Natasha Romanoff

Natasha spent a good 45% of her time in D.C. trying to get Steve laid.

Okay, maybe not 45% -- that’s way too much investment in anyone’s personal life that’s not her own but it was definitely up there on the list of things that she spent her spare time thinking about, right next to remembering Laura Barton’s birthday and daydreaming about Sharon Carter’s button-down shirts.

It’s just that he was so fucking sad. Lost in a way that she didn’t know how to put a name to and unbearably lonely in that big, empty apartment that he left only for necessities, for groceries or missions or to visit a woman who didn’t always know his name.

Natasha knows maybe better than anyone that sex isn’t a solution for grief or anger or the ache inside your soul that takes hold when you feel completely untethered from the reality that you thought you knew. It stands to reason that it wouldn’t be a solution for waking up in a new century and finding that everyone you ever loved was either dead or dying, either.

There’s no solution, no cure-all for that outside of letting the wound scab over and slowly start to heal; for Steve, she knew that could take years.

And she’s not sure if she believes in love, not the way people do in rom-coms and the romance novels that they sell in the airport bookshops. Love can’t chase away the shadows that linger after dark; only a well-planned exit strategy and a garrote under your pillow can do that.

But working together day-in, day-out, Natasha found herself liking Steve, found herself wanting to be his friend, in spite of every instinct that tried to tell her otherwise. And she just thought ...well, maybe it would chill him out a little. Loosen some of the tension in his shoulders. Give him a spring in his step the morning after, even if it didn’t last for very long.

Faced with the enormity of his grief, it was the only thing she could think to do, outside of ambushing him in his apartment with ten pounds worth of Five Guys.

Despite her best efforts, all it took for Captain America to get his groove back was tearing down an intelligence agency full of Nazis, literally and figuratively, and then shortly after that, becoming an international fugitive. Go figure. She could’ve saved herself some time, if she’d known that.

Now, he’s made the whole world see him for who he is: a reckless, messy idiot who isn’t afraid to break every rule in the book just to do the right thing.

And maybe that’s all he needed, in the end -- the right mission, a reminder that he’s more than what the whole world made Captain America out to be.

Still. She did kind of expect him to chill out a little more once James re-entered the picture.

.

Natasha starts her day the same way she starts every third Thursday of the month, these days.

There’s an official Avengers check-in scheduled for the same time that James meets with his federally-appointed psychiatrist. Sharon Carter accompanies James to each of these sessions, as dictated by the agreement set out by the Joint Chiefs, which pretty much just defeats the entire purpose of doctor-patient confidentiality altogether.

But Natasha quietly set him up with a separate therapist that she thoroughly vetted, a woman named Erin who served in the Gulf War and now commutes into the city from the sprawling upstate farm that she shares with her wife. James meets with Erin every Monday morning, so in the end, it doesn’t actually matter. The government sessions are a formality to help President Gilchrist sleep better at night and besides, Natasha doesn’t exactly hate having Sharon Carter in her bed once a month.

So, Natasha starts her day the same way she starts every third Thursday of the month, these days. In a queen-sized bed in her fourth-floor walk-up on the Upper West Side, with a tuft of blonde hair in her face and Sharon Carter in her bed.

“It’s too early,” Sharon groans, and Natasha presses a grin into the back of her neck.

“I know they trained you better than that at Quantico,” Natasha says, skimming one hand underneath Sharon’s t-shirt, along the pale ticklish skin of Sharon’s stomach.

Sharon huffs. “I know you know that Quantico is F.B.I. territory.”

“I’m Russian,” Natasha intones in a faux Moose-and-Squirrel-esque accent. “I know nothing.”

Sharon turns around in bed to face Natasha. “It’s not too late for me to try and talk my way into a throuple with Steve and Bucky, you know.”

Natasha wrinkles her nose. “I don’t think Steve could handle a throuple. And I’m fairly certain that James is gay.”

Sharon collapses back into the pillows with a dramatic swoon. “Guess I’m just stuck with you for now, then.” The move has only exacerbated her already out-of-control bed-head and with the soft light filtering through thin dove gray curtains, coupled with the easy chatter floating up from the street, Natasha could almost convince herself that they are not dangerous people. That their lives could be like this all of the time.

Natasha’s pretty sure that even now, if pressed, Sharon could make at least three weapons out of the various detritus littering Natasha’s bedside table.

It’s an unbearably attractive trait.

“Alright,” Sharon says with a groan, heaving the sheets and comforter aside. “We have to be in midtown in an hour and a half, I’ll go put the coffee on.” She grabs a hair tie off the table, taming her bed-head into a top knot, and slips out of bed clad in nothing but her underwear and an over-sized Washington Nationals t-shirt.

“Well, I hate to watch you leave, but I love to watch you go,” Natasha murmurs, stretching her arms over her head and giving Sharon an exaggerated once-over, paired with an eyebrow wiggle.

Sharon summarily tosses a pillow in her face. “Whoever introduced you to American cultural humor should be shot.”

“Blame Barton,” Natasha says, shifting the pillow aside. “He’s been shot plenty of times, so he probably wouldn’t take it personally.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sharon says, making her way for the kitchen. “Black coffee and banana pancakes?”

“You’re such a good housewife,” Natasha cracks, if only for the reaction it gets, which is an immediate “fuck off,” and Sharon flipping her off over her shoulder as she walks away.

Natasha leans forward in bed, propping her elbows on her knees and pushing the rest of the blankets away. It’s a solid routine that they’ve got going, here. She’s not sure how long it will last -- not sure how long she’ll let herself have something that feels this easy and good and worth every fucking second she can spare, but for now…well, it works.

“I’m not waiting on you like a fucking servant, Romanoff,” Sharon calls out from the next room. “Get your cute ass in here.”

“Yes ma’am,” Natasha answers, and then hops out of bed, following the sound of Sharon’s laughter.

.

They make it to Stark Tower with five minutes to spare, riding the sleek grey elevator up to their respective floors. Sharon gets off at floor twenty-six with a small salute and Natasha takes it the rest of the way to floor thirty, where the informal Avengers meeting room is set up. It’s less a meeting room and more a living room stuffed full of couches interspersed with USB ports and fancy jugs of fruit-infused water, all clustered around a holographic port that Tony uses to project any relevant mission details, if there’s any mission to be had.

Right now, Tony is fiddling with what looks like a floor plan, an abandoned mixer full of smoothie slowly congealing sat behind him on a side table.

Natasha makes a bee-line to where Clint is sitting on their usual couch, right across from Steve and Sam. Scott and Hope are bowing out of this month’s effort, Natasha remembers, because they’re taking themselves to Napa Valley, and also probably because Scott finds Tony’s jokes entirely annoying.

Bruce is still M.I.A. and Thor is off-world, which just leaves Wanda, Vision, and Rhodey. Rhodey is perched on the edge of an armchair, looking for all the world as if he wants to pretend that whatever awkward courtship reconciliation is happening quietly between Wanda and Vision right next to him isn’t happening.

“_I’m too old for this shit,_” Rhodey mouths in her direction and Natasha doesn’t even try to hide her answering smirk.

“How long has that been going on,” Natasha whispers instead, leaning over towards Clint’s good ear.

Clint snorts softly. “At least ten minutes. I’m making bets with myself on how long it’ll take before Rhodes cracks and tells Wanda that it’s not too late to find herself a Real Boy.”

Natasha leans back into the plush back of the couch, crossing her arms over her chest. She nods at Sam, lips curling up at the edges. “How’s it hanging, flyboy?”

“Can’t complain,” Sam says. He jerks his head towards Steve. “_He’s_ being weird, though.”

“I’m not being weird,” Steve protests, sitting up from the slight slouch he’d slipped into. Sam meets Natasha’s gaze and makes a face as if to say, _see what I mean?_

Steve looks the same as he did when Natasha last saw him three days ago, when they were finishing up taking down a HYDRA ring in rural Kentucky. He’s in olive green khakis and a soft-looking cabled navy sweater, which is all typical Steve clothing. He’s flushing slightly under her scrutiny but that doesn’t mean anything; she’s never met a single person who blushes as easily as Steve does with that fair Irish skin of his. But he also keeps tapping his foot against the ottoman, like he can’t sit still. That’s the weird part, Natasha realizes. Steve usually has his full attention focused on team meetings; eyes forward, body language still, all while he takes careful notes on his tablet.

His tablet is on the ottoman, looking as abandoned as Tony’s smoothie, and Steve is also tapping one finger idly against his right knee.

Natasha leans forward, balancing her chin on her elbow. If Steve’s not paying attention, it means that there’s something else on his mind. Something that’s making him fidgety and unable to sit still, like he wishes he could be elsewhere.

He’s got an eidetic memory, Natasha muses to herself, which makes every memory, every moment that much sharper, and whatever he’s thinking about right now, it’s got him all out of sorts and just like that, the penny drops. Natasha leans back in her seat again and lets a slow, cat-that-got-the-canary grin cross her face. “Oh,” Natasha says, “he got laid.”

“Huh,” Sam says. He looks over at Steve and then nods. “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.”

Steve tips his head back against the couch and lets out a groan. “Jesus Christ, Natasha.”

“Hey man, that’s awesome,” Sam interjects, with only a small amount of teasing in his voice, but Sam’s typical bone-deep authenticity shines right through anyways. “Resuming a healthy sexual relationship after everything you two have been through takes work. Takes a lot of trust.”

Somewhere to the right of Natasha, Tony lets out a strangled squawking noise.

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. “Can we ...maybe not do this conversation in front of everyone?”

“If you had your way, we wouldn’t have this conversation at all,” Sam points out.

“Can we?” Tony butts in. “Can we all just agree not to have this conversation at all?”

“I’m just surprised,” Natasha continues, as if Tony didn’t say a word. Next to her, Clint is coughing into his fist, which means he’s trying gamely to hold in his full-throated hyena cackle. “I assumed sex would be the one thing in the world that would get you to relax and instead it’s turned you into Captain Ants-In-His-Pants.”

“Must’ve been some damn good fucking,” Sam agrees, nodding thoughtfully. Natasha catches hold of the glint in his eye and is suddenly overwhelmed with affection. She really does love these idiots.

Sure, Clint is her partner, but Sam and Steve are her _team_, they’ve spent the past year and a half living in each other’s pockets, and well...she and Sam spent a lot of time putting up with Steve’s dumb pining ass. They’ve earned this.

At this point, Steve is now leaning forward with most of his face buried in his hands to hide the flush, but his shoulders have started to shake with laughter despite his embarrassment, so Natasha doesn’t feel an ounce of guilt.

“It was,” Steve admits, mumbling through the fingers covering his face, and Sam crows with victory.

“Okay,” Rhodey says, cutting in with his authoritative Colonel Rhodes voice, “can we please start the meeting?”

“Natasha,” Sam says in a mock stage whisper, “I think we’re scaring the straights,” which is right about when Wanda starts giggling and Steve’s silent amusement turns into full-on guffaws.

“Okay,” Tony says, raising his voice above the laughter, “meeting adjourned, canceled, whatever. All of you get out of my fucking house.”

“I’m not sure I understand what everyone is laughing about,” Vision says to him, and at this, even Tony cracks, shaking his head wearily and letting out a low snort.

Steve sits back up, picking up his tablet off the ottoman. His face is bright red and the corner of his lips are still quirking upwards, like he’s fighting a smile, but he clears his throat. “We’re not canceling the meeting. Nat and I took down a HYDRA cell in rural Kentucky the other day and I think we picked up some good intel that there may be more in rural communities across the country.”

“Okay, good, Nazis in Kentucky, great, I can do that,” Tony says, visibly relieved. “Nat, did you back intel up on a flash drive?”

“Always do,” Natasha quips, digging the flash drive out of her jacket pocket and handing it over. “I did some preliminary analysis on my system at home -- it looks like our next hit will be in Oklahoma.”

Tony does that elaborate hand gesture with his tech that he always does, springing a blue holographic map to life in front of them. “Yeah, that looks about right.”

And just like that, the meeting is in full swing and as usual, about three or four people start talking strategy at once.

Across the room, Natasha catches hold of Steve’s gaze just for a second to mouth out the words, _”I’m happy for you,_” at him. Steve rolls his eyes at her but a small, pleased smile crosses his face, probably because he knows her well enough to know that she really does mean it.

She gets better than anyone what it takes to rebuild your life brick-by-brick after someone else decided to tear it down. They’re getting pieces of their lives back, slowly but surely, all while working to make new pieces at the same time.

And so is she.

.

She meets Sharon in the lobby afterwards, where Sharon is waiting on a plastic white bench with two cups of coffee in to-go containers.

“Guess what,” Sharon whispers in a sing-song voice, as she passes a coffee over to Natasha. “Steve and Bucky, sitting in a tree -- ”

“F-u-c-k-i-n-g?” Natasha completes the verse for her, in the exact same sing-song voice.

Sharon scrunches her face up in disappointment. “Steve go and blurt it out too?”

She really does love to have one-up on Natasha when it comes to figuring out secrets. If this had been news to Natasha, she would’ve been hearing about it for weeks.

Natasha shakes her head. “He didn’t have to. It was written into every inch of his body language.”

Sharon makes a soft humming noise as she takes a sip of coffee. “Yeah, even if Bucky hadn’t come right out with it, the hickies all over his neck definitely would’ve been a clue.”

“Soldiers,” Natasha says with a scoff.

“Not an ounce of subtlety in their bones,” Sharon says agreeably, even as she reaches out to hook their pinky fingers together.

Natasha glances at Sharon askance, taking in the slight curl of her lips and the way her hair is still wet from their morning shower. Natasha wants to take her home immediately. “When’s your flight back to Washington?”

“Not until the morning,” Sharon says, with a forced lightness that Natasha’s not sure she would’ve been able to identify just a couple of months ago.

“Well then,” Natasha says, taking a step closer to lace their fingers together completely. “Let’s not waste any more time.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part 5: steve & bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains mentions of ~period-typical homophobia~.

Some days, life before the war feels like a faraway dream. Other days, it’s the future, the here and now, that feels like it must be a figment of his imagination. 

The whole length of it, from start to finish, sounds impossible when Steve tries to string it all together. Eight years ago, he was a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. He had asthma, a heart murmur, a ramshackle staircase for a spine, and he could only hear out of one ear. 

Eight years ago, the year was 1941 and he lived in a one-room apartment in Vinegar Hill that was crumbling at the edges. He used to share a much nicer one-room apartment with Bucky but he couldn’t afford to keep it, not after Bucky got his draft notice. 

Eight years later, the year is 2016 and Steve is bigger, stronger, and healthier than he ever could’ve imagined. He wakes up every day in a steel and glass tower in Manhattan in a world where his name is published in history books and news articles alike. 

It’s strange now, to think of the mundanity of his old life: the day to day grind; the charcoal that used to stain every item of his clothing; the way he always had to skip the third step up to his apartment. 

And then there are the truths that he took to be set in stone: that he would always be poor; that it would be a miracle if he made it to his fiftieth birthday, let alone his thirtieth; that he and Bucky would never put words to what they meant to each other, no matter what used to happen between them behind closed doors back when they were kids. 

There were expectations for boys like Bucky, back then. Sure, if he’d wanted to, he could’ve done whatever he liked with other boys down at the shore near Coney Island or around the bars where the sailors used to cluster, but after a certain point, that kind of thing always stops. He was always going to be the type of man who gets married and starts a family. 

Bucky wasn’t an artist or a writer or a well-to-do heir from Manhattan who could slum around the parlors in Brooklyn Heights. He was the only son of Irish and Jewish immigrants who desperately wanted more for him than they were able to provide and in return, Bucky gave back to them impeccable grades in school and a boxing championship as proof positive that everything poured into raising him was going to be worth it in the end. 

It didn’t matter that Steve looked at Bucky and saw all the pieces of him that nobody else knew about. Saw the furtive anxieties that Bucky admitted to Steve beneath the scratchy sheets on the bed in their first apartment and only ever in the dark of night, like a confessional; saw the way Bucky’s hands shook so hard he accidentally snagged a button on Steve’s shirt the first time they ever fooled around. Steve knew the exact shape of Bucky’s mouth when it would tick downwards, like a parenthesis, every time his father would have a glass of scotch too many, and how his eyes would crinkle upwards when his baby sister called out his name. 

In the grand scheme of things, those were just irrelevant details -- afterthoughts in a life that was meant to take another path entirely from where they’ve ended up. 

The problem with where they’ve ended up is, sometimes they forget. 

It’s hard to treat the world around you like a snow globe that’s gotten shaken up and then transformed entirely in the process of settling. It’s like their minds can’t help it, they still trace the same routes that they used to take when they were kids, back when all of this would’ve sounded like nothing more than the plot to one of Bucky’s crazy pulps. 

So, there are things that they still don’t talk about, even within the confines of their own bedroom, where Steve’s reasonably sure that no one is watching them. 

But lately, Steve’s found himself wishing that they could at least try. 

. 

There’s an image stuck in Steve’s head that he can’t shake. He goes for a run while Bucky is making dinner; he loops Central Park twice and then takes the rest of the way back to Stark Tower at a light jog, but still, the image stays lodged right in there, playing itself back and forth on a loop. 

In his mind, it’s 1944 and they’re in England for a brief respite. Steve had just finished going through plans with Peggy and Colonel Phillips, but all Steve could think about on his way back to the ridiculously ornate manor house they were holed up in was the way Peggy’s hand had lingered on his arm and how she’d winked at him when they shared a joke behind the Colonel’s back. 

One minute, he was entirely consumed with thoughts of promised dances and red lips, and the next minute, a British soldier named Thomas Valentine was stumbling his way out of a room that Steve could have sworn was Bucky’s. 

Years later, Steve will never know what instinct made him duck backwards behind a corner. All he knows is that Valentine was barely out the door before Bucky was trailing out after him, holding out a cap. 

“Pretty sure you forgot this, Lieutenant Valentine,” Bucky had said, holding out a hat that was definitely British regulation. 

“Well, thank you muchly, Sergeant Barnes,” Valentine said in return, plucking the hat out of Bucky’s hands and placing it on his own head with a flourish. Valentine was shorter than Bucky by an inch or so but he was broader, built like a boxer in a higher weight class than Bucky ever could’ve hoped to achieve back in his competitive days. There was something entirely familiar in the way Bucky took a considering step closer to Valentine, reaching out a hand to graze the side of Valentine’s jaw, and it had made Steve flush with a jealousy that even now, he knows he had no right to. 

Steve had wanted to march straight down the hallway and demand answers, but he didn’t, of course. He never said a word to Bucky about Lieutenant Valentine; they never see the man again and by the time they’re back in the thick of it, Steve’s got a million more pressing issues to deal with than whether or not his best friend slept with a British officer. 

Now, suddenly, it’s all Steve can think about. 

. 

The elevator opens up onto their floor in Stark Tower and Steve strides right out of it like a man on a mission, only to find Bucky standing at the stovetop island, messy brown hair up in a bun, wearing a worn sweatshirt that used to belong to Sam and a floral apron gifted to him by Nat, and Steve is momentarily struck dumb by how in love he is. 

“Did you have sex with Liutenant Thomas Valentine?” Steve blurts out, before a single ounce of good sense can catch up to him. He’s keenly aware of the fact that he’s sweating through his tight grey shirt and that his headphones have slipped from his hands to the floor. 

“Hello to you too, pal,” Bucky says slowly, tapping the wooden spoon he was holding against the side of the pot, and then setting it aside. He frowns softly, like he’s thinking something over. “That the British officer with the ginger beard? When we were in...Kent?” 

“Bristol,” Steve corrects, feeling wrong-footed and also entirely like an asshole. “Yeah.” 

“Huh,” Bucky says. “I couldn’t remember his name. Yeah, we fooled around.” Steve searches Bucky’s expression for clues but all he can find is faint bemusement at this turn of events. Well. He guesses Bucky has a long and storied history in putting up with Steve’s bullshit. This can’t possibly rate anywhere near the top of the scale. 

Steve, on the other hand, is contemplating whether or not throwing himself into the East River would be too dramatic. He also can’t seem to stop opening his mouth and saying something stupid because what comes out next is, “why?” 

Bucky gives Steve a long, searching look, like he’s trying to figure out where the fuck Steve is going with this. “I don’t know, lots of reasons. Because he was handsome and he asked. Because I was miserable and getting fucked through a wall seemed like a good way to deal with it.” Bucky shrugs, picking up the wooden spoon again and dipping it into the pot to stir the chili some more. “If this is an expression of jealousy, sweetheart, I’ll remind you that you were halfway to picking out the flowers for your wedding to Peggy at the time.” 

“It’s not,” Steve says, even though it kind of is. “It’s just, I guess...I didn’t realize that was something you did. With uh, other men,” Steve finishes as he trails off awkwardly. 

Bucky casts his eyes towards the ceiling meaningfully. “Do you want to take this conversation elsewhere?” 

“Not really,” Steve says, because he is suddenly incredibly, viciously sick of tip-toeing around the space that he shares with his own partner. Let whoever is monitoring them be as uncomfortable as they deserve to be. 

Bucky turns off the stove, reaching for a lid to cover the pot of chili with. He stands there in silence for a long minute, gathering his thoughts. He didn’t used to be this way, before, but it never strikes Steve as something uniquely related to HYDRA. This sort of carefulness feels like a quality that Bucky would’ve grown into anyways. 

Finally, Bucky lets out a sigh. “I guess that answers the question of whether or not you knew I was spending a lot of my late nights in queer bars.” 

Steve rears back, a little. “But...you had dates.” 

“I did have dates,” Bucky confirms. “And I took them dancing and I walked them home, and then I went out again after.” 

“But...ladies loved you, Buck,” Steve says, confused. “You went steady with that girl Alice for a month and she wouldn’t stop going on about what a damn gentleman you were.” 

“Yeah, well…” Bucky shrugs, a little helplessly. “I don’t have a good answer for it, pal. I had no fucking idea what I was doing. I just knew that the person that I really wanted, I couldn’t have, and everything else just…I guess it just sorta followed.” 

Steve hates himself a little for the flare of jealousy that burns hot and quick in his gut. “Who...who did you really want?” 

At this, Bucky lets out a short bark of a laugh that he cuts off just as quickly, peering at Steve across the kitchen island. “You, you dumbass. I wanted you.” 

“But…” Steve starts, and then trails off. He’s desperately trying to figure out at what point in this conversation he hopped on the Wonder Wheel only to have it take off without him. “Bucky, you _had_ me.” 

Bucky laughs humorlessly. “C’mon, pal, don’t bullshit me. You...you wanted to get married and have a family, you didn’t want to be any more different than you already were. I saw the way you used to get, when John McNally went around calling you a fairy.”

“John McNally was an asshole,” Steve says, indignant. “You never fucking told me any of this.” 

“How the fuck would I tell you any of this?” Bucky says, gesturing wildly with the wooden spoon. Distantly, Steve realizes that splatters of tomato are probably getting on Tony’s pristine white cabinets. 

And the hell of it is...Bucky’s not wrong, exactly. That’s the thing that’s got Steve rooted to the spot, staring dumbly into space. Steve did get a certain way when John McNally called him a fairy because it made something ugly and festering within him rise up to the surface, along with a little voice that said to him, _you’re everything they say you are_. 

He _did_ used to downplay his art when people would ask him about it because he knew that a good portion of the queers hanging around Vinegar Hill were artists of one sort or another. He could tell himself it was self-preservation but he’s never once in his life figured out a fucking way to be cautious enough for that. 

It’s just...if he had known that Bucky wanted more from him than just two pals fooling around sometimes, well. That would’ve made things different. It would’ve been worth all the rest. There’s not a moment since Bucky first came careening into his life that Steve didn’t understand on some cellular level that he would do anything for Bucky. 

It was true then; it’s true now. 

Steve swallows around a lump rising in his throat. “Well, we’re a real pair of idiots. ‘Cause here I was thinking the dumbass who didn’t stand a chance with the fella he was crazy about was me.” 

Bucky points at him with the spoon. “I told you not to bullshit me, Rogers. I know how you felt about Peggy. And I don’t...I was happy for you. I was. I wanted that for you. Don’t think that I didn’t.” 

“I loved her,” Steve admits, leaning over to pry the spoon from the Bucky’s right hand and set it carefully on the counter. “I still do. But...how I felt about her didn’t change how I felt about you. Sometimes, I thought maybe it should, but…” Steve lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug. “To quote a handsome fella I know: I had no fucking idea what I was doing.” 

Bucky ducks his head, letting out a slow chuckle. “Where was this smooth talking on all the double dates I set up for us, huh?” 

“Came with the serum,” Steve quips, expecting the smack to the chest that he gets for it. 

Bucky takes a step around the kitchen island so that they’re pressed flush together, metal arm reaching out to toy with the hem of Steve’s sweat-soaked running shirt. “Rogers, you smell disgusting.”

“Gee, I love you too, pal,” Steve says, pressing a kiss into the top of Bucky’s head, both hands coming to rest at Bucky’s hips. 

Bucky tilts his chin up. “Oh, I’m sorry, did you need another heart-rending confession about how long I’ve been in love with you?” 

“Nah, I’m good,” Steve says, leaning down to meet Bucky for a slow, lingering kiss. “You know, I hear kids these days are all about saving water by sharing showers.” 

“Is that so,” Bucky says, in that low, heavy voice of his that never fails to send a shiver up and down Steve’s spine. “Well. In that case, I think dinner’ll keep.” 

. 

Later, after the shower, after dinner and the dishes and spending a solid hour or so sprawled on their over-sized sectional listening to NPR, Steve murmurs into the silence, “you know, _we_ could get married.” 

Bucky lifts his head from where it was laid against Steve’s chest. “Pal, let’s maybe focus on getting off this fucking island first.” 

“What, you don’t want to get a place in NoLita after all this is done?” Steve asks dryly. 

“Don’t be disgusting, Rogers,” Bucky scoffs, but he lays his head back down anyways, so he can’t be too horrified. 

“Alright, so after we get off this fucking island and we get a place in Brooklyn, again.” Steve rests a hand at the base of Bucky’s neck, tangling his fingers in the hair that’s escaped from the bun, the pad of his thumb sweeping back and forth along the skin that's exposed along the collar of Bucky's henley. “We...we could get married. You know. If you want.” 

His mind floods with ideas of what their lives could look like five years down the road. A brownstone in Brooklyn, maybe in Clinton Hill or Bed-Stuy. They could get a dog or two, and probably a cat too. It’s a dream that they never could’ve had, not in their old lives; Steve hasn’t had an asthma attack in years, but suddenly, his chest goes tight with how badly he wants this possible future to be real. 

Steve can feel the curve of Bucky’s grin as it presses itself into the skin of his collarbone. “Sweetheart, ‘course I want to marry you. I mean, this is a shitty fucking proposal, but I’m not gonna hold it against you.” 

“I’ll work on it,” Steve promises. “We’ve got time.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> +1 
> 
> Sam Wilson

It took Sam a minute to warm up to Bucky. 

He had to parse through it, spend some time sitting with himself to figure out the source of that particular itch of annoyance. 

Was it that he had feelings for Steve? That was the first thought, the most obvious, but after the immediate shine of a freshly-won battle started to wear off, the adrenaline fading into a daily routine, Sam got to know Steve a little better. Far from the pure patriotic poster boy image that gave conservative politicians a hard-on every time they were up for re-election, Steve turned out to be a messy, queer sarcastic piece of shit packed into that giant superhero body. By the time they’d reached Poland, Sam already knew he wanted to be the guy’s best friend for the rest of their lives, but that the two of them were way too similar for anything else. 

Did it have anything to do with the fact that Bucky was the only Howling Commando that anyone wrote essays on back in APUSH, even though Gabe Jones was _right there_ winning Pulitzers for his French poetry and shit? 

It’s a tempting explanation but it does feel a little mean to blame the casual racism of a bunch of Maryland high schoolers on a guy who was getting tortured by Nazis at the time. Instead of, you know, blaming it on America's deeply ingrained institutionalized racism and a garbage high school curriculum. 

When Sam finally gets it, when he finds the source of that itch of annoyance, it feels devastatingly, stupidly obvious. 

After all, not everyone gets to have their ex-almost-boyfriend come back from the dead. 

It’s a shitty, pointless thought to have, and what happened to Bucky was a nightmare that no one should ever have to endure, a price that he would never have Riley pay, but it’s _his_ shitty, pointless thought. And he’s trying to do this thing these days where he lets himself be petty and emotional when the mood strikes him because it’s exhausting, trying to hold everything together all the time. 

So, Sam lets himself have his shitty thought and the low-burning resentment that comes with it but not for long. He makes himself breathe through it and then he lets it go. He lets it go and he makes a point to spend a little more time with Bucky the next time they’re in Wakanda, and the more he does it, the more he likes the guy. 

They poke fun of Steve’s beard together and take turns trying to crack a joke that actually makes Okoye laugh. One time, Bucky catches Sam reading a book of Gabe Jones’ poetry and spends the rest of the afternoon telling Sam long, increasingly elaborate stories about the shit he and Gabe would get up to during the war. 

By the time they’re all stateside again, Sam considers them friends. Properly friends, in a way that has nothing to do with Steve. He thinks Riley would be proud of him.

But man, Bucky can be a real pain in the ass. 

. 

It starts the day Bucky decides to use Twitter for the first time. 

Bucky’s allowed a limited number of pathways outside of Stark Tower. Pretty much everything that’s not recommended by his psychiatrist is a tough sell but no one wants to tell the POW who lost all three of his younger sisters to old age that he can’t go hang out with his great-niece. 

So once a week, after shabbat services on Saturdays, Bucky hops on the downtown C train and meets Rikki for brunch in the West Village. 

And because people are stupid and racist and it doesn’t occur to anyone that they could be related, a paparazzi snaps a couple of photos and the next thing anyone knows, the internet is crawling with rumors of Bucky Barnes and his new girlfriend. 

It’s funny, well, it’s not funny but the look on Bucky’s face is priceless, and Sam gets a lot of joy from reading the best headlines aloud to him all while Bucky cringes into his morning coffee, slowly sinking lower and lower into his seat at the kitchen island.

It’s Chocolate Chip Pancakes Sunday, and with Natasha in DC pretending like she’s not there just to visit Sharon, it’s just the three of them for once. 

“Man Out of Time Bucky Barnes embraces the 21st century with New Lady Love,” Sam announces in his best stadium voice to Bucky, Steve, and the new potted plant that they’re currently trying to keep alive. “Wait, hold on, lemme scroll down, I think there’s more…”

“It’ll probably blow over soon, Buck, but if it bothers you that much, you know, you could always...set the record straight,” Steve points out, with a Herculean effort at keeping his face impassive that both Sam and Bucky see right through, especially with the way the corner of Steve’s lips twitch upwards. The man really has no poker face. 

“Nice wordplay, old man,” Sam says, reaching across the island to give Steve a fist bump. 

“Traitor,” Bucky says mutinously, hunching even further and clutching his coffee cup to his chest. “You could always sleep on the fucking couch, you know.” 

“Empty threat,” Steve says airily, as he flips a pancake. 

Bucky lets out a dramatic, mournful sigh, cupping the side of his face with his flesh-and-blood hand. “You’re right, pal. I like it way too much when you fuck me through the mattress.” 

“Gross,” Sam mumbles through a mouthful of melted chocolate-y dough and syrup at the exact same time Steve stammers out with an appalled, “Buck, _come on_.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Bucky says, reaching over to pluck Steve’s newly cooked pancake from the pan with his metal hand and placing it onto his own empty plate. “Did I make anyone uncomfortable?” 

Which, alright. Point to Barnes. Sam finishes chewing carefully, and then points his fork in Bucky’s direction. “Wordplay aside, it’s not a bad idea. You could always, I don’t know, make a statement on social media or something.” 

“What, like Twitter?” Bucky says, a thoughtful expression crossing his face as he slowly starts to eat his stolen pancake. “Shuri set me up with one but I’ve never used it. The whole thing seems a little…”

“Excessive?” Steve fills in. He’s already started to pour some batter into the hot pan to replace the pancake that Bucky stole. 

“I was gonna go with insane but sure, excessive works too,” Bucky agrees. “But...I guess people really use it, huh?” 

“Camilla made me set one up,” Steve says. “I update once a week, usually sharing some political information or supporting a charity, that kind of thing. She says it helps promote my brand, whatever that means.” 

“What’s my brand?” Bucky pauses mid-bite, screwing his face up in confusion. “One-armed Jewish homosexual in recovery from a lifetime of non-consensual murder?” 

Steve’s jaw tightens in the way it always does when Bucky cracks jokes about HYDRA, caught somewhere between anger and a horrible, sinking guilt. His eyes somehow get bigger and bluer, like a giant, star-spangled puppy. 

They fight a lot, when the pendulum swings closer to guilt, and Sam is absolutely not having that, not on a day when Nat isn’t here to run interference. 

Sam cuts in. “Nah, man it’s like….I don’t know, you share shit you like, music or movies or style, or you talk about things that are important to you.” He shrugs a shoulder. “I mean, it’s largely a cesspool, but there’s also like, DeRay McKesson and that kid who rates pictures of dogs.” 

Bucky just turns to Steve and raises an eyebrow; in return, Steve just shakes his head. Sam resists the urge to let out a sigh of relief. If they’re bonding over how the Future is Ridiculous, the coast is definitely clear. 

Bucky makes a soft humming sound, digging out his Wakandan phone with his right hand, swiping it open and shifting his thumb around as if to open an app. Sam winces as syrup streaks itself across the glass face of Bucky’s phone screen. 

“So I just ...open this up and start typing?” Bucky asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer before he goes ahead and just starts typing. “Is it gonna let me swear?” 

“I mean, sure, but I don’t know if you’re in the position to just...risk getting all pissy over it,” Sam cautions, casting a meaningful glance in Steve’s direction, but Steve, who not-so-recently picked a very public fight with Tucker Carlson, is not the right person to look to here. 

Well. If one of them has to be carefully watch his language, Sam figures it might as well be Captain America. Or whatever it is that Steve’s doing these days. 

“There,” Bucky declares, setting down his phone with a clatter and pushing it in their direction. “Done.” 

Sam turns the phone around so the text is facing him; next to him, Steve lets out a small huff of a laugh, and Sam very definitely doesn’t want to look up and see whatever disgustingly gooey expression Steve is probably shooting in Bucky’s direction. 

Still. He’s gotta hand it to the guy. Bucky’s tweet did get straight to the point. All puns intended. 

**@jamesbuckybarnes**

rikki is my wonderful funny smart great-niece you perverts also for the record, I’m fucking gay 

. 

The other thing about Bucky is, he’s funny. 

Not in the same way Steve is funny, with his rare one-liners and that small, sly smirk that crosses his face while he waits for everyone to realize that Captain America just cracked wise. 

No, Bucky is funny with a sort of absurdist frequency. His humor is just as dry as Steve’s but he doesn’t save it, doesn’t store it up for the right moment -- instead, he doles it out in frequent quips and poorly thought-out jokes, like he’s trying to make up for all of the years when he didn’t even know what a joke was. 

And maybe he is, but Sam thinks that Bucky probably has a long and storied history of being the one to poke and prod at Steve Rogers’ too-serious exterior, that this habit was borne from wheedling laughs out of little sisters and impossibly difficult best friends. 

It’s a reclamation of self and Sam, Sam who spent many long hours on his Ma’s couch re-learning how to breathe and smile and laugh in the months after Riley’s death, he can appreciate that. 

He can appreciate what that means for the amount of work Bucky’s put into getting this far in his recovery. 

Sam likes that he’s apart of that. The prickly back-and-forth that he and Bucky share is always undercut by genuine care; it’s good humor with a soft edge no matter how much they ramp each other up over the smallest, dumbest shit in the universe. 

But man, do they like to ramp each other up over the smallest, dumbest shit in the universe. 

.

The tweet itself isn’t the problem. 

Outside of a follow up selfie that Bucky puts up about an hour later to prove that it’s really him — one where he’s squinting into the camera, the late morning sun streaming into his face and Steve lurking in the background trying to finish some paperwork — it’s the only tweet Bucky ever makes. 

And the immediate aftermath, where Camilla makes Steve go on The View to deal with the fallout, well, Sam thoroughly enjoys taking that one in with Bucky, Nat, and a bowl of popcorn. 

The problem, Sam figures, is liberal, well-meaning straight white folks. 

Because once they find out a dude is queer, they gotta bend over backwards to show how tolerant and hip they are. Since the only info that the public ever gets about Bucky comes from paparazzi photos taken either to and from knitting classes, to and from brunch with Rikki, or to and from the Central Synagogue, this doesn’t give anyone a whole lot to go on. 

Tragically, enough paparazzi photos pile up that they turn into some truly annoying Buzzfeed articles dedicated to Bucky Barnes, Modern Style Icon. 

Bucky Barnes is not a Modern Style Icon. Bucky Barnes, whose chosen partner-in-life is utterly hopeless when it comes to twenty-first century style, decided to start taking fashion tips from his grand-niece instead. This pretty much just translates into a near-endless parade of black skinny jeans and combat boots and button-downs with funny prints. 

Basically, he goes around dressing like a lesbian. The dude is a walking Autostraddle article on tomboy fashion and that’s cool, it’s fine, that shit looks great on Rikki and if Sam is being honest with himself, Bucky kind of pulls it off too, but let’s not pretend that the guy is putting a lot of work into this. 

Sam, on the other hand. 

Sam likes to thoughtfully add a pop of color to his press conference suits. Sam carefully picks out a soft mauve sweater for his blind date with a hot staffer for a local senator and plays it off as nothing when his date can’t stop touching his arm. The guy turns out to be pretty dull, in the end, but Sam still counts the sweater as a major win. 

For Christ’s sake, Sam once showed up to a Stark Industries event where he was the only one that Pepper didn’t have any critiques for. 

Being stylish is Sam’s thing. If anyone is gonna be the stylish one on Team Cap, it’s gonna be him. 

. 

“Do _you_ want a bunch of straight white people to write Buzzfeed articles about your clothes?” Rikki eyes Sam with the sort of fresh-faced skepticism that Sam usually only gets from his little sister Nicole. It is, as always, deeply shaming. 

“Of course not,” Sam scoffs. “I don’t need their approval.” 

“So, what’s your point?” Rikki crosses both arms over her chest, giving him an unimpressed glare. In retrospect, grousing to Rikki over a plate of diner fries about her great-uncle was maybe not the best call, but what the hell, Sam has never claimed to be perfect. 

“My point is...” Sam says, pointing at Rikki with a ketchup-drenched french fry, “...somehow, I just know that he’s doing this on purpose to annoy me.” 

“Uhuh,” Rikki says, in a tone that makes it clear that she doesn’t believe him at all. 

In the space between them, a glob of ketchup falls from Sam’s french fry and onto the linoleum tabletop. 

. 

Next Saturday, Bucky trades in his wild patterns for a simple blush pink, short-sleeve button-down that then proceeds to blow up Sam’s twitter feed. 

“Nice shirt,” Sam says dryly, when he sees Bucky wearing it. “Popular, too.” 

Bucky looks down, frowning. “Is it?” 

. 

Steve is surprisingly a little more sympathetic than Rikki. 

They’re crossing Second Avenue on their morning run when Sam brings it up because he’s stubborn and proud and if Steve can carry on a conversation while they run, then so can Sam. 

Steve comes to a brief halt when they reach a light, leaning over to punch the button for Walk. He scratches at the side of his beard, a new habit that Sam’s come to realize means that he’s actually mulling it over. “I mean. He does enjoy fucking with you.” 

“_That’s_ what I said,” Sam says, right as the light changes and they take off again. “Control your man, Rogers.” 

Steve holds up both hands as if in surrender. “Hey, you enjoy fucking with him too. I’m not getting involved.” 

A mental image of Bucky crammed into the back of a VW Beetle flashes through Sam’s mind and he snickers. “I can’t help it if he makes the funniest grumbling noises when he’s pissed, like a shih tzu.” 

Steve glances at him askance. “Is that a weird future thing?” 

Sam jostles him lightly as they round a corner. “No, it’s a type of dog, dumbass. My mom had one growing up. They make these funny little grumbling noises and anyways, that’s not the point, the point is -- I gotta get him to admit it.” 

Steve barks out a laugh. “Good luck with that. Bucky’s got a hell of a poker face, when he wants to -- Nat’s the only one I’ve ever met that could do better.” 

“Steven Grant Rogers,” Sam intones. “You’re a fucking genius. _Natasha_ will know what to do.” 

“I said don’t involve me,” Steve groans, before proceeding to speed up as they enter the pedestrian section of the Queensboro, leaving Sam to weave his way through a small cluster of cyclists. 

“Real mature, _Captain America_,” Sam calls out, but the only response he gets is the distant sight of a middle finger growing increasingly smaller as it gets further and further away. 

. 

The next time Sam steps out for a five-dollar latte, he spends a shamefully long amount of time picking out slim-fitted black trousers and a deep purple polo that shows off his biceps. He gets three double-takes on the walk over that might have more to do with his affinity with the Avengers than anything else, but then the barista behind the counter scrawls his number on Sam’s coffee cup, so it’s not a total loss. 

“Not bad,” Bucky says, letting out a low whistle when Sam shows up later at Stark Tower. “You taking a page out of my book, pal?” 

Sam very carefully does not throw his latte in Bucky’s face but it’s a pretty near thing. 

. 

Natasha listens to Sam’s spiel all the way through and only at the end of it does he realize that she’s had him on speaker phone the entire time. 

Sharon’s deep-throated roar of a laugh comes through loud and clear on the receiver, coupled with Natasha’s low, teasing rumble. 

Sam hangs up the phone in a huff, only to receive a text message from Natasha about five minutes later. 

From: Russia, With Love 

_just confront him abt it, u loser_

“Well, that’s just wildly unhelpful,” Sam mutters to himself, before throwing his phone across the room. 

. 

Rikki comes down with a virus that Sam’s pretty sure can best be described as “the crud that happens when you take the subway,” and then Steve gets spontaneously summoned to UN Headquarters for no good-goddamn reason, which is how Sam gets talked into taking Rikki’s place for a Tuesday night knitting class. 

He’s such a damn easy sell when it comes to helping out a friend, it’s embarrassing. 

“Are you sure this is a beginner’s class?” Sam folds his arms over his chest, leaning back against the subway doors after they’ve slid shut. “Because lemme tell you, I am _not_ an arts and crafts gay.” 

Bucky scoffs into the heavy wool of the tartan scarf wrapped around his neck. “It’s Sweater Making 101. You’re telling me the almighty Falcon can’t handle a sweater?” He’s holding onto the pole with his glove-covered metal hand and for a second, Sam is fervently jealous of Bucky’s distance from the middle-of-winter L train germs. 

“The almighty Falcon underwent rigorous training to make the cut for the most prestigious pararescue program in the entire Air Force,” Sam points out. “But he has not, under any circumstances, learned how to so much as knit a sock.” 

“Socks are harder than sweaters,” Bucky says absently, before pulling a frown in Sam’s direction. “You know, you keep talking in third person and people are gonna think _you’re_ the crazy one.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam spots a white dude in a bright orange beanie holding up his iPhone in their direction, and bites back an exasperated sigh. Instead, he just shuffles a little closer to Bucky, lowering his voice. “Dude, you got a fan at my nine.” 

Bucky flicks his eyes to the left, just for a second, but doesn’t turn around. “How do you know that he’s not a fan of yours?” 

Sam cocks his head, trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice. “I don’t know, ‘cause I’m not Buzzfeed’s latest fashionista darling?” 

A smirk crosses Bucky’s face. “I’m sorry, did you just call me a _fashionista darling_?” 

“I hate you,” Sam bites out, settling back against the subway doors sulkily. “Just so you know.” 

Bucky cackles and the faux shutter of a camera phone goes off behind them, which just makes him cackle even more. 

Sam pushes out an exhale. “You’re doing this on purpose to annoy me, aren’t you.” 

For a hot second, Sam expects a denial or a blank face coupled with a “who me?” shrug because that’s exactly what Steve would do in this situation. Instead, Bucky just kicks out a foot, knocking one of his heavy boots against Sam’s trainers. “Well, yeah but it’s not any fun if you’re actually sore at me about it.” 

‘Sore?’ Sam mouths to himself, before shaking his head. He’ll get to the old man’s anachronisms later. “Dude, why?”

Bucky rolls his eyes, which just seems a little beyond the pale, since he’s the one trying to wind Sam up over here. “Sam. I’m allowed two outings a week and only ever to specific pre-approved places with specific pre-approved people. I’m bored.” At this, he shrugs. “And you’re bored too, so you know. I don’t know, I guess I expected you to retaliate more. Give us both something to do.” 

“I’m not bored,” Sam protests, but Bucky just slants him a look. 

“Uh-huh,” Bucky says slowly, drawing out the vowels. “You went from international fugitive running weekly intelligence missions to recently pardoned Avenger with nothing to fight. I mean, neither option sounds all that swell to me, but then again, I don’t share you and Steve’s special brand of crazy.” 

The subway pulls up to their stop and Sam steps back from the sliding door to let it open before stepping out, with Bucky close behind him. Sam shakes his head to himself, feeling a little bit ridiculous. “Okay, fine. I’m _so_ bored.” 

Because it’s true. They’re not running missions anymore. They could, probably, but everyone’s trying to take it easy while the dust settles after the pardons. Scott and Clint are off house-arrest and Sam’s allowed to take calls from his family again and it’s good, all of those things are good, but it’s all felt a little precarious after the instability of the past few years. 

So, in the meantime, they’ve settled into a normal life with normal routines. Sam volunteers at the Harlem VA and he buys over-priced coffee and he flirts with random attractive men who hit on him in coffee shops and Jesus Christ, he is so fucking bored. 

“How do people live like this?” Sam wonders aloud, pushing his way through the turnstile and making his way for the subway stairs. 

Behind him, Bucky lets out a small huff. “Without throwing themselves into almost certain danger at every opportunity? Pretty happily, I think.” 

Sam pointedly stops up short on the stairs so that Bucky collides into his back with a small “oof.” 

Bucky side-steps him, coming around to stand next to him as they make their way to street level, casting a shifty-looking glance in Sam’s direction. “Sam, I have another confession to make.” 

“No thanks.” Sam holds up a hand in Bucky’s face. “I know enough about yours and Steve’s sex life to last me an entire fucking lifetime and a half.” 

Bucky bats Sam’s hand away. “It’s not that. It’s just....okay, so as it turns out, this isn’t exactly, uh, a beginner’s knitting class.” 

Sam’s eyes narrow. “How not beginner are we talking here?” 

Bucky nervously shoves both hands into the pocket of his coat, all while pasting a neutral, friendly smile on his face. “There’s, uh, there’s about three beginner classes that you need to have taken first.” 

So, Sam pushes him into a snow drift. 

. 

Later, when Sam has finally managed to cast on twenty-four stitches about an hour and a half into the class, he looks up from his knitting needles to his now-tangled ball of yarn, and then to Bucky. A rush of fondness runs through him at the sight of the ex-Winter Soldier focusing diligently on a woolen navy sweater that’s definitely going to be a tight fit on Steve’s massive bulk. 

He nudges Bucky in the arm, gesturing with his needles. “You’re right. I do need to find something else to do but man, it is not gonna be this bullshit.” 

“Have you thought about Sam Wilson, Fashionista Darling?” Bucky asks, face entirely blank except for the twitch in the corner of his lips. 

“I need new friends,” Sam mutters, and Bucky lets out another long, loud cackle, startling the rest of the students, and in spite of himself, Sam starts laughing too. 

They get kicked out of the class but it’s 100% worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m queercap on tumblr, come say hi!


End file.
